Page 54 of Blood & Claw

“She fought them?” Ailsa’s voice caught.

“Aye, she’s tough,” he said ruefully. “Let’s hope she doesn’t push them too far.”

Cold washed over him then, cutting through the glibness of his comment. If she did, he was fucked.

Ailsa cut him a scowl. “Well, I’m glad she’s resisting them … she might escape.”

Darach made a non-committal sound and rose. Stepping away from the footprints and blood, he continued to search the area. Moments later, something else caught his eye: scratches in the dirt at the base of a nearby birch.

Dropping to a crouch once more, he leaned in.

Another triple spiral—calling to the Gods for help—but there were other designs as well. A spiral crossed by jagged lines and smaller curls branching from it. Sigils, although unlike the triple spiral, he didn’t understand this message.

“Ailsa.” He beckoned her over. “Can you decipher this?”

The scuff of boots followed, and then she was crouching next to him. Leaning in, she peered down at the marks, and then her breath caught.

He frowned. “What?”

“That spiral is another call for aid.” She then pointed to the slashing lines beside it. “And these warn of violence.”

Darach nodded grimly. Aye. That much was obvious.

“And this—” her finger hovered over a crooked line cutting north through the spiral “—means ‘The Uplands’.”

His gaze lifted. From this hilltop, they had a vantage point of the land rolling north. Loch Lethe glittered into the horizon, but beyond, the land would grow rocky and wild. Hard country to track men through.

Breathing a curse, he stood up. “They’re not going to make this easy.”

Ailsa rose too. Her eyes burned now, although something glittered in their depths. Hope. For the first time since leaving Farnoch, her shoulders lowered slightly.

“No … but they can’t be far.”

“They’re not,” he replied, crossing to Rùn. “If we ride hard, we’ll catch up with them before nightfall.”

He swung onto the saddle, ignoring the protest in his bones.

A scent hit him without warning then. Warm fur, crushed grass, and sweet, hot blood. Rabbit. His head turned before he could stop himself, his nostrils flaring.

Gods damn it.

Forcing the growling beast down, he held a hand down to Ailsa.

She took it, though he marked her slight hesitation before she did so.

Rùn surged forward as soon as she climbed up behind him, and they were off—down the hill and back onto the road.

14: NOT TONIGHT

“WAKE UP, AILSA … we need to stay sharp.”

Ailsa jerked into consciousness. Momentarily disoriented, she blinked furiously to clear her foggy mind. Curse it. Despite her excitement that they were closing in on their quarry, exhaustion had claimed her. She’d fallen asleep against Dale’s back.

Everything had finally caught up with her. She was bone tired. All she wanted to do was crawl into a pile of soft furs and sleep for a moon. She couldn’t though.

Not when they were this close to Kayla.

Those men were taking her mentor into The Uplands, and Kayla was fighting them every inch of the way.